


Repeat

by SLWalker



Category: due South
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-27 11:38:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8400232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLWalker/pseuds/SLWalker
Summary: Sometimes all you need is that second chance.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kayteecakes](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=kayteecakes).



"I kept repeating myself."  
  
Two of the street lights were out and the wind whistling against the brick facades of buildings was sharp, cruel; it ached in the lungs and the throat. Ray hunched against it, shoulders pulled forward, muscle memory older than Florida and older than Vegas, just shy forty years of Chicago winters. Fraser stood in his leather jacket and flannels and jeans, shoulders squared, untouched by the cold; just shy forty years in much colder places than Chicago, tempered in the north.  
  
"To anyone who asked -- indeed, several who didn't, as well -- I told them how I came to Chicago," Fraser continued, looking at Ray from his vantage ten feet away on the sidewalk, his hands held out to his sides as if to say _I mean no harm._ "The same words, every time."  
  
Somewhere in the tired ruts of dug-in thoughts, Ray knew he was supposed to come up with words back; reassurances or bluster or questions or maybe even anger. But he had nothing. The wind made his throat ache. If he weren't so tired, he might have blamed it for the burn in his eyes, too. He wasn't even quite sure Fraser was real, standing there. Or maybe just another ghost his mind cooked up for him, something else to wake him up at night.  
  
He dropped his head and rubbed his eyes with half-numb fingers and waited, but he wasn't sure for what, and then there was something warm wrapped around his other hand and when he looked up, Fraser had closed the gap between them.  
  
Fraser only looked down then, at their joined hands, studying the concrete a long moment before looking up again, squarely, face painted in dim light and regret.  
  
"I never told them why I stayed."


	2. Masks

Ray tried on every mask he had.   
  
First he tried on Vecchio-Just-Before-Vegas because it seemed intuitive that was what Fraser was after, but it didn't fit right; the bluster was half a note flat, the gestures three beats too slow, the silence that followed stifling, choking.  
  
He tried on Vecchio-Right-After-Fraser-Appeared, too, coarse and bright and sharp-edged and the ashes of emotional exhaustion trying to give way to a renewed flame of determination, the kind that could be fanned into a blaze by some sweet, oblivious guy out of the north who didn't have anyone in the city and needed someone to care. But that one was even worse, and just left him feeling sad and broken.  
  
Vecchio-After-Victoria was maybe even not so hard, since those bullets hit close together, but when he tried to tell Fraser that he could go back north, they were Even Steven, Fraser flinched and something in his eyes hurt to look at, so Ray quit there and reached for another, trying to find the right one.  
  
He went through all of them, and none of them fit, and Fraser wouldn't tell him which one he was supposed to put on -- cop, family man, best friend, undercover fuckup, loud-mouth Italian, Vegas, Florida -- and eventually Ray quit and sat with his hands clasped between his knees on a park bench he didn't even remember Fraser dragging them to, and he asked, plaintively, "Benny, what do you _want_?"  
  
"Just this, Ray," Benny said, carefully deliberate, but his hand was so warm when it landed on the back of Ray's neck and Ray didn't know why that made his eyes burn, the warm tick of the thumb there at the base of his skull. "Just this. Just rest."


End file.
